Bronze statue is B.C. native sculptor’s tribute to his great-great-grandfather

Kim Pemberton, Vancouver Sun05.13.2013

Artist Luke Marston is the great-great grandson of Portuguese Joe Silvey and his second Coast Salish wife Kwatleematt. The 36-year-old has been working for the past year on a 14-foot sculpture that will depict his colorful ancestors’ lives.

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When acclaimed native artist Luke Marston works on his latest and largest project to date, he likes to think about his ancestors and the colourful lives they led at the turn of the century in British Columbia.

Marston is the great-great-grandson of Portuguese Joe Silvey, a whaler, a Gastown saloon keeper and the first person in B.C. to get a seine fishing license, and his second wife Kwahama Kwatleemat. Silvey’s first wife, Khaltinaht, came from a prominent Musqueam family. She died of tuberculosis in her 30s after giving birth to two daughters. He would later have nine children with his second wife, a weaver.

“It is such a great story. When the first settlers came here it was a negative thing (for the First Nations people) but not with him. He married the chief’s granddaughter (Chief Kiapilano) and was accepted by the people.”

Marston is commemorating the lives of Silvey and his wives, and the connection between the Portuguese and Coast Salish people, in a 14-foot bronze sculpture that has been proposed for a site in Stanley Park, where Silvey lived with his first family. The location is at Brockton Point, near the Harry Jerome statue. Silvey later moved to Reid Island, in the southern Gulf Islands, with his second wife, which is where he is buried.

Marston’s sculpture, which has been more than two years in the making, is set to receive final approval from the Vancouver park board, with a tentative unveiling scheduled for Sept. 28. The city’s public arts committee gave unanimous approval for the project and the design last December.

Half of the sculpture, which he is carving from yellow cedar, is completed and now being cast in bronze at a foundry in Red Deer, Alta. What remains to be finished are the life-size representations of Silvey and his two Coast Salish wives, which Marston is carving at his workshop near Ladysmith with help from his brother John.

A non-profit society called the Portuguese Joe Memorial Society paid for the work after getting funding from the Portuguese community and provincial and federal legacy grant programs. The Portuguese consulate general is a member of the committee, along with historian and author Jean Barman, who wrote a book called The Great Adventures of Portuguese Joe Silvey.

“He was very interesting man,” said Marston. “Portuguese Joe means a lot to the Portuguese community and to the native community. It’s been a real cultural exchange doing this project. We had a Coast Salish speaker talk to the Portuguese community and did our songs and dances.”

He said to help raise funds for the project he has also made limited-edition silkscreen prints of the stone design that will be at base of the sculpture. Those black and white stones are coming from Portugal and being put in place by a Portuguese mason.

Silvey left Pico Island in Portugal’s Azores archipelago to go whaling at the age of 12. He ended up on B.C.’s coast and as a young man opened a saloon in Vancouver across the street from John Deighton, generally known as Gassy Jack, after whom the Gastown neighbourhood is named.

Marston said the symbols on the statue have a meaning, such as the grey whale that represents the whaling occupation that brought Silvey initially to B.C., and a circle that represents his saloon called Hole in the Wall. Under the circle there is also a grapevine that represents the grapes Silvey either brought with him or later bought from Portugal, and that he replanted on Reid Island — which remain today.

His children are represented by five female salmon and six male salmon, and there is also a design of a blanket that belonged to Chief Kiapilano. There’s also a star to represent a boat he built, named Morning Star, and mud sharks, which he would catch to extract oil to sell to miners to use as fuel in their lanterns.

Marston was a recipient last year of the Queen’s Jubilee Medal. Among his most recent projects are the Medicine Box, a carved bentwood box that represents the survivors of the residential school system and has travelled across Canada during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the 14-foot-high Healing Pole, commissioned by former B.C. lieutenant-governor Stephen Point to stand outside Government House in Victoria.

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Bronze statue is B.C. native sculptor’s tribute to his great-great-grandfather

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